Georgia Institute of Technology School of Mathematics | Georgia Institute of Technology | Atlanta, GA

TBA

It has been known that when an equiangular tight frame (ETF) of size |Φ|=N exists, Φ ⊂ Fd (real or complex), for p > 2 the p-frame potential ∑i ≠ j | < φj, φk > |p achieves its minimum value on an ETF over all N sized collections of vectors. We are interested in minimizing a related quantity: 1/ N2 ∑i, j=1 | < φj, φk > |p . In particular we ask when there exists a configuration of vectors for which this quantity is minimized over all sized subsets of the real or complex sphere of a fixed dimension. Also of interest is the structure of minimizers over all unit vector subsets of Fd of size N. We shall present some results for p in (2, 4) along with numerical results and conjectures. Portions of this talk are based on recent work of D. Bilyk, A. Glazyrin, R. Matzke, and O. Vlasiuk.

We model and analyze the dynamics of religious group membership and size. A groups is distinguished by its strictness, which determines how much time group members are expected to spend contributing to the group. Individuals differ in their rate of return for time spent outside of their religious group. We construct a utility function that individ- uals attempt to maximize, then find a Nash Equilibrium for religious group participation with a heterogeneous population. We then model dynamics of group size by including birth, death, and switching of individuals between groups. Group switching depends on the strictness preferences of individuals and their probability of encountering members of other groups. We show that in the case of only two groups one with finite strictness and the other with zero there is a clear parameter combination that determines whether the non-zero strictness group can survive over time, which is more difficult at higher strictness levels. At the same time, we show that a higher than average birthrate can allow even the highest strictness groups to survive. We also study the dynamics of several groups, gaining insight into strategic choices of strictness values and displaying the rich behavior of the model. We then move to the simultaneous-move two-group game where groups can set up their strictnesses strategically to optimize the goals of the group. Affiliations are assumed to have three types and each type of group has its own group utility function. Analysis on the utility functions and Nash equilibria presents different behaviors of various types of groups. Finally, we numerically simulated the process of new groups entering the reli- gious marketplace which can be viewed as a sequence of Stackelberg games. Simulation results show how the different types of religious groups distinguish themselves with regard to strictness.

The study of the longest common subsequences (LCSs) of two random words is a classical problem in computer science and bioinformatics. A problem of particular probabilistic interest is to determine the limiting behavior of the expectation and variance of the length of the LCS as the length of the random words grows without bounds. This dissertation studies the problem using both Monte-Carlo simulation and theoretical analysis. The specific problems studied include estimating the growth order of the variance, LCS based hypothesis testing method for sequences similarity, theoretical upper bounds for the Chv\'atal-Sankoff constant of multiple sequences, and theoretical growth order of the variance when the two random words have asymmetric distributions.